In that small town nestled on the edge of geography, like the last speck of dust on a map, time flowed not by the clock, but by the seasons. It froze in the fierce winters, thawed with a splash in the spring thaw, dozed sultry in the summer and was sad with the dank rains of autumn. And in this slow, viscous flow, the life of Lyudmila, whom everyone simply called Lucy, was drowning.
Lucy was thirty years old, and her whole life seemed hopelessly stuck in the quagmire of her own body. She weighed one hundred and twenty kilograms, and this was not just weight, but an entire fortress erected between her and the world. A fortress of flesh, fatigue and quiet despair. She suspected that the root of evil was somewhere inside, some kind of breakdown, illness, metabolic disorder, but going to the specialists in the provinces was unthinkable – distant, humiliatingly expensive and, it seemed, useless.
She worked as a nanny in the municipal kindergarten “Kolokolchik”. Her days were filled with the smell of baby powder, boiled porridge and eternally wet floors. Her large, incredibly kind hands knew how to comfort a tearful baby, and deftly make a dozen beds, and wipe up a puddle without causing the child to feel guilty. Children adored her, were drawn to her softness and calm affection. But the quiet delight in the eyes of three-year-olds was a small price to pay for the loneliness that awaited her outside the gates of the kindergarten.
Lyudmila lived in an old, eight-apartment barracks, left over from some glorious Soviet times. The house was on its last legs, its beams creaked at night and it was afraid of strong winds. Two years ago, her mother had left her forever – a quiet, exhausted woman who had buried all her dreams within the walls of this same Khrushchev-era building. Lyusya did not remember her father at all – he had disappeared from their life long ago, leaving behind only a dusty emptiness and an old photograph.
Her life was harsh. Cold water, rattling in rusty streams from the tap, the only toilet outside, resembling an ice cave in winter, and stifling summer heat in the rooms. But the main tyrant was the stove. In winter, it voraciously devoured two full trucks of firewood, sucking the last juices out of her modest salary. Lyusya spent long evenings looking at the fire behind the cast-iron door, and it seemed that the stove was devouring not only the logs, but also her years, her strength, her future, turning everything into cold ash.
And then one evening, when the gathering twilight filled her room with a gray melancholy, a miracle happened. Not loud and not pompous, but quiet, shuffled, like the slippers of her neighbor Nadezhda, who suddenly knocked on her door.
Nadezhda, a janitor from the local hospital, a woman with a face furrowed with wrinkles of care, held two crisp bills in her hands.
“Lucy, forgive me, for God’s sake. Here. Two thousand. They didn’t cry to me, forgive me,” she muttered, thrusting the money into Lucy’s hand.
Lucy only looked in surprise at the money, the debt for which she had mentally written off as a loss two years ago.
“Come on, Nadezhda… You shouldn’t have worried.”
“I should!” the neighbor interrupted hotly. “I have money now! Listen here…
And Nadezhda, lowering her voice, as if telling a terrible state secret, began to tell an incredible story. About how Tajiks descended on their town. How one of them, approaching her when she was sweeping the street, offered a strange and frightening salary – fifteen thousand rubles.
– They need citizenship, you see, urgently. So they travel to our holes, looking for brides. Fictitious ones, for marriage. Yesterday I got married. I don’t know how they negotiate there at the registry office, they probably shove money, but everything is done quickly. Mine, Ravshan, he is sitting with me now, “for the bliziru”, as soon as it gets dark – he will leave. My daughter Svetka also agreed. I need to buy her a new down jacket, because winter is just around the corner. And what about you? Look, what a chance. Do you need money? We need it. And who will marry you?
The last phrase was spoken not out of malice, but with bitter, everyday directness. And Lucy, feeling the familiar pain stab her heart again, thought for just a second. The neighbor was right. A real marriage was not in sight. There were no suitors, there were none, and there could not be any. Her world was limited by the walls of the garden, the store, and this room with the gluttonous stove. And here was money. As much as fifteen thousand. She could buy firewood with it, she could finally put up new wallpaper to at least slightly drive away the melancholy of these faded, torn walls.
“Okay,” Lucy said quietly. “I agree.”
The next day, Nadezhda brought the “candidate.” Lucy, opening the door, gasped and instinctively backed away into the hallway, wanting to hide her massive figure. A young man stood before her. Tall, thin, with a face not yet touched by the severity of life, with large, very dark and incredibly sad eyes.
– My God, he’s just a boy! – Lucy blurted out.
The young man straightened up.
– I’m already twenty-two years old, – he said clearly, almost without an accent, only with a light, melodious breathiness.
– Well, – Nadezhda began to fuss. – Mine is fifteen years younger, and yours is only a little difference – eight years. A man in his prime!
At the registry office, however, they did not want to formalize the marriage right away. The official in a strict suit measured them with a suspicious look and announced that according to the law, a month of waiting was required. “To think,” she added meaningfully.
The Tajiks, whose business part was completed, left. They needed to work. But before leaving, Rakhmat — that was the young man’s name — asked Lucy for her phone number.
“It’s sad to be alone in a strange city,” he explained, and in his eyes Lucy saw a familiar feeling — lostness.
He started calling. Every evening. At first, the calls were short and awkward. Then they became longer. Rakhmat turned out to be an amazing conversationalist. He talked about his mountains, about the sun, which was completely different there, about his mother, whom he loved madly, about how he came to Russia to help a large family. He asked Lucy about her life, about her work with children, and to her surprise, she told him. She didn’t complain, she just told him — about funny incidents in the kindergarten, about her home, about how delicious the first spring earth smelled. She caught herself laughing into the phone — loudly, like a girl, forgetting about her weight and age. During that month, they learned more about each other than most spouses do during their years of marriage.
A month later, Rakhmat returned. Lucy, putting on her only elegant silver dress, which clung tightly to her figure, caught herself in a strange feeling – not fear, but excitement. His fellow countrymen, equally fit and serious young men, were witnesses. The ceremony was quick and emotionless for the registry office staff. For Lucy, it was a flash: the sparkle of wedding rings, official phrases, a feeling of unreality of what was happening.
After all, Rakhmat went to see her home. Entering the familiar room, the first thing he did was solemnly hand her an envelope with the promised money. Lucy took it, feeling a strange heaviness in her hand – it was the weight of her decision, her despair and her new role. And then Rakhmat took a small velvet box from his pocket. In it, on black velvet, lay an elegant gold chain. – This is a gift for you, – he said quietly. – I wanted to buy a ring, but I didn’t know the size. I… I don’t want to leave. I want you to really become my wife.
Lucy froze, unable to utter a word.
– Over the past month, I have heard your soul on the phone, – he continued, and his eyes were burning with a serious, adult fire. – It is kind, pure, like my mother’s. My mother died, she was my father’s second wife, and he loved her very much. I have fallen in love with you, Lyudmila. For real. Let me stay here. With you.
It was not a request for a fictitious marriage. It was a proposal of marriage. And Lucy, looking into his honest, sad eyes, saw in them not pity, but what she had long since stopped even dreaming about – respect, gratitude and nascent tenderness.
The next day, Rakhmat left, but now it was not a separation, but the beginning of waiting. He worked in the capital with his fellow countrymen, but he came to her every weekend. And when Lucy found out that she was expecting a child, Rakhmat did something new: he sold part of his share in the common business, bought a used Gazelle and returned to the town forever. He began to work as a taxi driver, transporting people and goods to the regional center, and his business quickly went uphill thanks to his hard work and honesty.
And then a son was born. And three years later – another. Two handsome, dark-skinned boys with the eyes of their father and the kind, smiling nature of their mother. Their house was filled with shouts, laughter, the patter of little feet and the smell of real family life.
Her husband did not drink or smoke — his religion did not allow it — he was incredibly hardworking and looked at Lucy with such love that the neighbors began to squint angrily. The eight-year difference dissolved in this love, became completely invisible.
But the most amazing thing happened to Lucy herself. She seemed to blossom from the inside. Pregnancies, a happy marriage, the need to take care not only of herself but also of her family — all this made her body reborn. The extra pounds began to melt away on their own, day after day, as if they were that unnecessary shell that protected the tender and fragile creature for the time being. She did not diet, her life was simply filled with movement, care, joy. She became prettier, her eyes began to sparkle, and her gait became more resilient.
Sometimes, standing by the stove, which Rakhmat now carefully stoked, Lyusya looked at her sons playing on the carpet and caught her husband’s warm, adoring gaze. She thought about that strange evening, about the two thousand rubles, about her neighbor Nadezhda, and about how the greatest miracle often comes not in the radiance of lightning, but in a knock on the door, bringing with him a stranger with sad eyes, who once gave her not a fictitious marriage, but a whole new life. A real one.
